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Facts MatterFri, 13 Jun 2014 18:16:47 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.2The Alternative Vote System Explainedhttp://www.britannica.com/blogs/2010/09/the-alternative-vote-system-explained/
http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2010/09/the-alternative-vote-system-explained/#commentsMon, 20 Sep 2010 06:53:58 +0000http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2010/09/the-alternative-vote-system-explained/Editors’ Note: On September 14, the Britannica Blog published posts on alternative vote with Peter Facey of Unlock Democracy and Matthew Elliott of NO2AV. We received some responses from our readers, including this post from Alistair Jones, Principal lecturer in the Department of Public Policy at De Montfort University in Leicester, England. Given the extraordinary constitutional change that voters in the United Kingdom will be asked to cast judgment on, likely next May, this article helps to explain how AV works.

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The alternative vote (AV) electoral system is used in Australia for the elections to their House of Representatives. It is also the system which has been proposed for a referendum in May 2011 to replace simple plurality (or first past the post) in United Kingdom parliamentary elections.

Critics of AV are quick to point out that the system is complicated. This is not the case. AV is similar to simple plurality in that single member constituencies are used. Bear in mind that in England, multi-member wards are used in local government elections. Multiple voting is also used in these English local government elections, with voters casting up to the same number of votes as there are candidates to be elected. Arguably, this is far more complicated.

Under AV, voters should rank the candidates in order of preference. A ‘1’ should be placed next to their first preference, and a ‘2’ against their second, and so forth, ranking as many candidates as they wish. If a voter wishes to put a mark against just one candidate, that vote will still be counted.

To gain election under AV, the leading candidate needs an absolute majority of votes, i.e. over 50%. Should no candidate receive over 50% of the votes then the last placed candidate is eliminated, and the votes for that candidate are redistributed to the next-placed candidate on each ballot paper. This process continues until a candidate wins over 50% of the votes cast. It is demonstrated in the table below, an example from the Australian House of Representatives for the federal election in 2007 for the constituency of Bass, in Tasmania. Total votes cast were 63,835. To gain election, a candidate needs 31,918 votes

An interesting point to note is that the candidate who won the most first preference votes failed to win the election outright. Michael Ferguson, of the Liberal Party, won 43% of the first preference votes. It was only after the final round of exclusions that Jodie Campbell, of the Australian Labor Party, passed Ferguson. This shows the importance of each redistribution of votes and, from the voter’s perspective, the importance of ranking preferences.

For many candidates, there is a belief that they need to target all voters in their constituency. Failure to do so may result in electoral loss—as can be seen in the table above. This is not always the case. It is still important to get the party’s core support out to vote in the constituency. The first preference—especially for the major parties—is the most significant vote. How voters cast their subsequent preferences is far more difficult to ascertain—or even to influence. None of the mainstream parties wish to be associated with, for example, extremist parties. Nor are they likely to appeal to such voters to gain their subsequent preferences.

When discussing any electoral systems, there is one key point to remember. The electoral system provides the rules under which elections are run. Voters decide the electoral outcome.